Reviewing the Mail: Week of 3/26

Some weeks I blather on for a while up top here, before getting in the whole point of this exercise, but not today. I get books in the mail, and then I tell you about them. This week, there's just one. Here it is:

Lost & Found is an omnibus of three previously published picture books by Australian writer/illustrator/filmmaker/Oscar-winner/Hugo-winner/World-Fantasy-winner Shaun Tan, combining The Red Tree (which I mentioned briefly when I read it in April 2009), The Lost Thing, and The Rabbits (written by John Marsden) into one volume. Tan's big book, of course, is the wordless graphic novel The Arrival, one of the best books of any kind of 2007, which I reviewed for ComicMix back then. I've read all three of the books included in Lost & Found separately over the past few years, and I'm pretty sure there are copies of Lost Thing and Rabbits in the house somewhere. But Shaun Tan is a great visual artist, a pretty good writer, and Lost Thing is a thoughtful, interesting story that I'm glad to have an excuse to read again.

Arthur A. Levine Books, the piece of Scholastic that brought you J.K. Rowling among many other things, will publish Lost & Found in April, and I hope even those of you without children will take a moment to at least look at it. (Or at The Arrival, which is Tan's masterwork so far.)